Thursday, February 28, 2008

Star Parker on the Fair Tax

Considering the wide public sympathy for "cleaning up Washington," it's too bad that more attention hasn't been given to Mike Huckabee's "Fair Tax" proposal.

There is no perfectly constructed tax, and this idea, like all, has its shortcomings. But it also has huge benefits relevant to today's concerns and warrants much more serious attention than it's getting.........The income tax, with its 45,000 pages of tax code, is now simply a sandbox for politicians and lobbyists to play in. This is what we should focus on in all the discussion about special interests, lobbyist influence and runaway growth in government.................The number of registered lobbyists in Washington doubled over the last eight years, from 17,000 to more than 34,000. A good chunk of their business is generated by proposed additions or changes to the tax code............ Ironically, the major reason the national retail sales tax gets so little attention is because insiders deem it politically impossible to achieve. Those who are part of the problem don't want the solution. The tax code is now one huge special-interest honey pot, and the swarming bees want to keep it that way.